by Sara Evans
After a moment, Jade returned to her rocker. “I said I’d pray, Max. And I will.”
So it wasn’t up to him anymore. It was up to the God of heaven and earth. Only He could change Jade’s heart.
Eight
Liz Carlton, one of Jade’s regular consigners, popped her head into the Blue Umbrella. “Jade, sugar, you’ll want to see this.”
“What? The coon dogs running?” July Days in Whisper Hollow meant anything goes. Yesterday afternoon, two rival bakers had celebrated Pie Fight Day. Main Street was littered with piecrust, berries, and whipped cream. Today was Coon Dog Day.
“You’ll wish it was the coon dogs.” Liz tipped her head toward Main Street. “Hurry.”
She followed Liz out. This better be good. Business was slow today so Jade spent the quiet moments praying, asking God to align her heart with Max’s. Or his with hers. Football. Texas. It just never, ever entered her mind as a life they’d lead. Even though she did love the game.
How many hours of Midnight Football had she played in Prairie City?
A crowd gathered on the sidewalk outside the Blue Umbrella. Mae Plumb, the owner of Sugar Plumbs, glanced at Jade and squinted through the trail of smoke rising from her cigarette.
“She’s gone plum wild, Jade.”
“Who?”
An air horn blasted the air and knocked Jade’s lulled heart awake. The crowd leaned back in unison, ooohing and ahhing.
“Jade,” Mae called again. “You best do something, shug.”
“Me? Why me?” Jade cut through the crowd and stepped into the street. The air horn blasted again. Jade spotted a golf cart at the top of the hill.
“Get your Rebel Benson gear, folks.” The horn blasted. The cart drifted forward. Clothes flew out of the side and hit the pavement.
Oh no. June. Jade started up the hill, easy, careful not to spook her prey. More clothes flitted from the cart, hung in the air, then sank to the street.
“Golf clubs, shoes, balls, and towels. Platinum cuff links.” Two shiny bobbles arched out of the cart. A hiker raced into the street. “Good for you, boy.” June blasted the air horn. “I got Armani. Ralph Lauren. Hand-stitched leather loafers all the way from It’ly.” The shoes clunked against the street.
June blasted the horn again. And again. The crowded thickened. Cars pulled over and tourists unloaded.
“Come one, come all, get your Rebel Benson souvenirs right here.” Blastblast of the horn. More clothes littering the street. The golf cart eased over the yellow line. A cluster of onlookers scrambled out of the way.
“Whisper Hollow mistresses of the not-so-honorable Judge Rebel Benson, come out, come out wherever you are. Heck, maybe even a tourist or two has had a tryst with the noble judge. Get your Rebel Benson souvenirs.”
Shirts fluttered in the air.
Jade met the cart in the middle of Main. “June, what are you doing?” She looked sane. Jade sniffed. She wasn’t drunk.
“Mind your own, Jade.” June blasted the air horn in her face. Jade winced, leaning away. “Look there, my old bridge buddy Pollyann Markham. Admit it, I know you had a little crush on my husband, Pollyann. Didn’t you have a weekend at your sick aunt’s a few years back? The same weekend Reb had an emergency lawyers’ convention. There’s no such thing as emergency lawyers’ conventions.”
Blast. Clothes. Another blast. Pollyann Markham disappeared in the crowd.
“June.” Jade walked alongside the cart. “Why don’t you hit the brake and let me climb behind the wheel?”
Blast. “No.”
“June, you’ve lost your mind.” A man called from deep in the crowd, “Go home.”
“Forget it, Bob Zimmer. I’ve earned this, don’t you think?” June tossed another bundle of clothes from the cart. A watch. Rebel’s new Cartier. Ties. “Get your Judge Rebel Benson souvenir.”
“Pull over, let me drive.” Jade tried to get in, but June pressed the gas.
“You’re not the police, Jade.” June gunned the gas again so Jade lost her hold on the side and barely kept herself from crashing to the pavement. Okay, she saw how June wanted to play.
“June!” She pulled over. Finally. And stepped out, raising a megaphone to her lips.
“Listen to me, Whisper Hollow. You marry the man you love with bright, blinding, I mean blinding stars in your eyes, believing true love has chosen you. On your wedding day, you walk down the aisle toward your handsome groom, tall and resplendent in his hand-tailored tux, heart exploding with so much joy, love, and excitement you can barely draw a deep breath.”
“June, give me the megaphone.” Jade tried to snatch it but her tennisplaying mother-in-law was too quick. She ran around to the other side of the cart. The crowd shifted with her.
“Then it happens. Kaboom. Lies, cheating, lust; the destroyers of all dreams. I’m here to tell you, ladies and gentlemen”—June pointed to the crowd, an evangelist for the lovelorn—“there is no such thing as true love, or fidelity. No such thing as ’til death do you part. Oh no, parting is the death. Only trouble is, the man still lives, kicking and breathing, reminding you every day that forty-one years of your life were given to the wrong man. What then? Some of y’all know what I’m talking about. Liam Lowe, you been married, what, four times? And you, Beth Trout, you must have had two, maybe three affairs. Was your marriage worth a dalliance into adultery?”
Several onlookers gasped. Some laughed.
“That’s right. It’s shocking. It happened to my own daughter-in-law, right, Jade? Thought she married a faithful man, a true man.”
“June, stop.” Embarrassment burned down Jade’s middle. “Why are you doing this?”
June lowered the megaphone. “Because I’m sick and tired of lies and secrets.”
“You’ve lived with them for forty years. What’s changed?”
“Me.”
June had caught Rebel with another woman back in the spring, about the same time Jade discovered Max had a son. Together, the two of them drove Mama back to Prairie City in a ’66 convertible Cadillac. Pink. A few days later Reb flew to see her in the company jet and pledged to change his ways.
“June, you’re a classy, cultured lady. This is beneath you.”
June eyed Jade with a hard optic rebuttal and jammed the megaphone to her lips. “It’s time to take life by the reins. Don’t let life rein you.”
Jade flattened her hand over the megaphone speaker. “So you’re throwing his stuff in the streets and calling out his mistresses?” Not that Reb didn’t deserve it.
“I’m sixty-four years old, Jade. I’m through with pretending. Everyone in this town is hurting, hiding, thinking no one knows the things they’ve done.
Well I do and I’m putting it all out there.” June jerked away from Jade and went back to the megaphone. “Did y’all know my son had a baby outside his marriage? Sure did. And Jade here had an abortion when she was sixteen. Now she can’t get pregnant to save her—”
Jade lunged at her mother-in-law, shoving her into the golf cart, stumbling and tripping, and pinned her against the seat. “You blast your business if you want, but you don’t blast mine.” Hard, passionate words.
The woman had lost her mind. Lost. Her. Mind. Jade yanked the megaphone from June’s tan, slender, bejeweled hand. “You’re making a spectacle of yourself.”
“Oh, Jade.” Her laugh was weak. “I’ve been a spectacle for a long, long time. Only today, I’m in on it. Now let me up.” June righted herself, fixing her hair and smoothing her hand over her tennis top. Her congregation started to dwindle.
Jade spotted Chandler Doolittle from the Whisper Hollow News, a weekly paper, creeping along the back of the crowd with his camera.
“Chandler’s here, June.”
“Oh good, he got my message.” June stretched to see him, smiling when she did, and waved.
Jade ran around to the wheel and hopped into the cart before June got out. She released the brake and mashed the gas. “Hang on, June.”
&
nbsp; “Wait, did Chandler get my picture? Woohoo, Chandler, did you get it all down for your ‘Hollow Happenings’ column? Call me.”
“June, stop. You don’t want this on the Internet.” Jade powered the cart down the hill, made a U-turn at the light, and headed back up toward the country club. She hollered at Mae as she passed, “Get Rebel’s stuff.”
What bothered Jade the most about June’s Main Street confessional was the truth embedded in her words. The woman spoke from experience and from her heart. Embarrassment aside, Jade believed everyone within hearing distance of June went home convicted about examining their hearts. Even if for a moment.
You marry the man you love with bright, blinding stars in your eyes, believing true love has chosen you . . . Lies, cheating, lust; the destroyers of all dreams . . . There is no such thing as true love, or fidelity.
Despite the cordial culture of Whisper Hollow and the full church pews on Sunday mornings, the Hollow harbored secrets. Infidelity. Backstabbing. Gossip. Lost love. Destroyed dreams.
Standing at the sink peeling potatoes for dinner, Jade realized she’d already experienced a taste of the world June described, and it went down bitter.
After dropping off June and her borrowed cart at the club, Jade had closed the Blue Umbrella and driven up to Eventide Ridge to think and pray. For June. For Max. For the secret she knew about Asa. For her own heart and weak trust. It took a good hour to exhaust herself at the foot of the cross.
Then she came home and Googled a few things.
A car door slammed. Jade looked up, out the kitchen window. Max rounded the corner of the garage hoisting Asa on his shoulders. Against the green backdrop of their wooded yard and the golden trails of afternoon sun lacing through the treetops, her husband and son created a serene picture.
“Mama.” Asa ran to her when Max set him down. “Look.” He held up a toy car.
“Drugstore.” Max set a small bag on the counter.
“Very nice, son.”
“I thought we could watch a movie tonight so I picked up some snacks at Kidwell’s.” He held up a box of Milk Duds, rattling the contents. “But you have to eat your dinner first.”
He could be so wonderfully goofy. “I’m fine with dinner first. You’re the junk food junkie.” Jade peeked into the bag. M&Ms, all varieties, chips, jelly beans, popcorn, and licorice. “Who else is watching this movie with us?”
“No one, but I wasn’t sure what we wanted.” Max kissed her forehead. “I heard some interesting whispers in Kidwell’s.”
“I bet you did.” Jade quartered the potatoes and slipped them into the boiling water.
“Mom drove a golf cart down Main Street? Tossing out clothes, yelling things about Dad?”
“In rare June Benson form.”
“Do you know why?” Max came around the island and leaned against the counter.
“She said she’s had enough. Your dad canceled counseling, but other than that I don’t know if anything happened between them.” Jade twisted open a can of green beans. “She also blabbed our business to the crowd. I pushed her in the cart and drove away.”
“Our business?” Max said. “You mean, mine.”
“I mean ours. Your affair, my abortion. Chandler Doolittle heard it all. Can you get me the small saucepan?” Jade pointed to the island cupboard.
Max reached down and handed it to Jade. “If you didn’t see it with your own eyes, I’d never believe it.”
“I couldn’t believe it, Max. Even though I chased her down Main Street. I thought she was drunk, or that something really bad happened that made her finally snap. But she seemed of sound mind. Sober.”
He stared at the wall. Jade knew what he was thinking. How to avoid becoming like his parents. She’d been pondering the same thing all afternoon.
“I think I’ll give her a call,” Max said. “Check in with Dad too.” Asa stood at Max’s feet, offering up his Cheerios container. “Open, please.” Max popped the top and handed it back to Asa. “Here you go, buddy.”
Jade locked in on Asa’s face. He looked so much like Rice. But didn’t Jade see Max in his eyes? And the full pout of his lips?
She’d checked the mail and her e-mail when she came down from the ridge, in the middle of her Googling, and had received nothing from Taylor. But silence was golden at this point. It meant Jade didn’t have to speak about this to Max.
Max leaned over her shoulder, the scent of his skin seeping into hers. “Smells good. What are you making?”
“Meat loaf, mashed potatoes, green beans.”
Max lowered his head to see her face. “You’re making all my favorite dishes.”
“A man’s gotta eat.” Her gaze met his. She was tired of being in debt to fear and betrayal, driven by bitterness. Enough already.
“Thank you.” He lifted her chin and kissed her, a teasing spark of passion buzzing across her lips. The soft ends of his hair brushed her cheeks. “I’m all in, Jade. I promise you.” He pulled back and leaned against the counter. “By the way, I checked in with Tripp. He’s a good friend as well as accountability partner. I can still see his face when I told him I’d do anything to get clean. Also I called Clarence and said I’d work with the associates, take pro bono cases. I’m golfing with the Rainwaters in the morning. Even though Gil Rainwater is about the most bleeping client on the face of the earth. Pray I don’t smash him with my club instead of the ball. I won’t be able to take Asa to school, though. And oh, I also talked to Reverend Girden. He can counsel with us if you want.”
“What happened to Texas and football?” She felt a bit deflated. She’d spent all day praying. Googling. Thinking. Surrendering.
“Well, it’s still there, but you really didn’t seem to want to go, so I started figuring out what I’d do if we stay here. You’re right, there’s lots to do and the time will go by fast. What? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“Max.” Jade grabbed the pale yellow collar of his oxford. His long bangs framed his temples, accenting his eyes. Everything about him made her want to love him. Trust him. “Look me in the eye. You really don’t have any phantom back pains or desire for pills?”
His gaze held without a flinch. “No phantom pains, no desire for pills. At all. He whom the Son sets free is free indeed. Why be a prisoner when Jesus already paid the price? Granted, I have to do the work to stay free, but I have no craving or desire whatsoever to go back to my old ways. I don’t even like that guy.”
“I believe you.” She released his collar. Max didn’t move other than to rake his hair out of his eyes.
“Okay, now that I passed the test, what’s going on in that pretty head of yours?”
“I’ve been praying . . . and don’t give me that look. I told you I would. Spent an hour up on the ridge after I got your mom out of the street.”
“And?”
“I came home and Googled Colby. It’s not like the Hollow, but it seems like a nice little town. Yeah, it’s in the middle of nowhere—but with a population of fifteen thousand, it’s bigger than the Hollow.” Jade flipped on the oven light to check the baking meat loaf. “I didn’t realize it’s only twenty-five minutes from Amarillo. I read a few articles and it does seem Colby High needs something good to happen for the football program.”
“You’re making my heart go pitter-patter.”
“Maybe you are the man for the job, Max. Did you know they used to be state champs two or three times a decade all the way back to the teens?”
“Yeah, I know, I told you.”
“I hate when traditions die. When old things are forgotten or tossed aside.” She absently wiped her hands on the dish towel. “Max, what happened with your mom today scared me. In a good way. Could that be me thirty years from now? Driving down Main in a stolen golf cart, throwing your things or anyone’s things into the street, blurting my guilt and shame?”
“No, that’s not you thirty years from now. Or me. We’re nothing like Mom and Dad.”
“Not today, Max. But th
e Hollow has a way of lulling people to sleep. We think we’re safe up here, cloistered away from the world, but we’re just as evil and sinful as everyone else. We get comfortable. Lazy in life. Do you know how many affairs and secrets are in these hills?”
“Scary, I know. But there’re good people too. Reverend Girden and his wife. Tripp and his family. Lillabeth and her parents are honorable, God-fearing people.”
Asa ran into the room with his new car and opened his personal cupboard. “Drink, please.” He offered up his cup. Jade tugged open the fridge and filled it with his apple juice.
“There you go, sweets.” She kissed him, brushing his hair aside. And, she told herself, if they went to Colby, Jade might be able to bury Rice’s secret in the Hollow. Where it belonged.
“Colby probably has just as many ruts and pitfalls as Whisper Hollow. We just don’t know what they are yet, Jade.”
“But we go in fresh, with new eyes.” She came around the island to Max. “If we’re starting over, then let’s start over. Let’s go someplace where the only person we know is each other. That’ll make us or break us—fast.”
Max narrowed his gaze and stepped back. “You’re willing to trust me that much?”
“I’m going to trust God and pray hard. Max, it’s time to be happy. To choose life. I want to try. Let’s pull out my roots and transplant them in Texas. I don’t want to be my mom, flying off and wild, but I don’t want to be your mom either. Stuck in the Hollow, bitter and resentful.”
“As long as you’re with me, we can do anything.”
Max grinned, then donned his cross-examination expression. “What about the Blue Umbrella?”